Badly Drawn Boy | Have You Fed The Fish

Uplifting tunes and serious pop songs.
CD, V2/XL

Publicatiedatum: 14 november 2002

It wasn't a long way, from the underground to becoming a famous artist, for
Damon Gough — aka, Badly
Drawn Boy. His debut album The Hour of Bewilderbeast did that for him
in
the year 2000; it also scored him the Mercury Music Prize and a lot of
hit singles. His gigs have attracted film stars like Meg Ryan, Harvy Keitel, and
James Caan, and two years later he provided the soundtrack for the Weitz
brothers movie About A Boy, written by Nick Hornby and featuring Hugh
Grant.
The sad thing about the soundtrack was that the movie's ideal son-in-law, Hugh
Grant, was
also on the cover. But that album has to be regarded as an intermezzo, because
there were only a few interesting songs on it. But still, we do like productive
musicians who can fill our hunger for more and more good music. And so here is
Gough's new album: Have You Fed the Fish?

It seems like Badly Drawn Boy is, aside from movies, also interested in
musicals.
He doesn't refrain from stereotypical orchestrations, mostly done by string
sections or a bunch of trumpets. An intro like 'Coming Into Land,' or 'All
Possibilities,' could fit on any random Robbie Williams album, but there is
also great resemblance to the always-cheerful Tahiti 80. The first
tracks show there is a bigger role for guitarplay on this album, like on the
jangling, typical BDB track 'Born Again.' Also typical is the acceleration
method Gough uses on 'How?' — similar to what he did on 'The Shining' from
his
debut. On Have You Fed the Fish?, Badly Drawn Boy combines uplifting
tunes with
serious pop songs. However, the last ones aren't always the most interesting
ones. And that's a shame, because he put a lot of those on the end of the album,
so it doesn't lead to any kind of an outburst that you might expect from a
possible musical lover.
The way he diverted the best tracks (also singles) on The Hour of
Bewilderbeast can't be found on this album, because they're mostly in the
middle. Especially on 'You Were Right' (detail: the track before that is
called 'I Was Wrong'), where the uncomplicated tone suddenly becomes serious, as
he starts lamenting the deaths of famous musicians: "I remember doing nothing
on the night Sinatra / Jeff Buckley / Kurt Cobain / Johan Lennon died." It's a
reflection on how he thinks about people who've died because of music. Badly
Drawn Boy proves that he didn't win that Mercury Music Prize for nothing, and
that he's still able to entertain and provide some nice songs. But Have You
Fed The Fish? won't have the impact on everyone like The Hour of
Bewilderbeast did two years ago.